Got Weeds? This Northern Virginia Farmer Rents Out Mini-Goats For Land Clearing

CATHARPIN, VA – Shawna Hawkes of Heritage Springs Farm likes to keep her animals busy. Her mini-Nubian goats have just gotten themselves a new job: landscaping.

The little goats are already milk-providers and yoga instructors, earning their keep practicing head-butt asana with participants in the farm’s goat yoga events. Now, they’re also extremely cute lawn mowers.

All the animals on the farm have a job – often multiple jobs, since many of them contribute to Heritage Springs Farm’s agritourism business by hopping around, looking sweet and interacting with visitors. During a visit to the Catharpin family farm, Hawkes told Patch how all her animals contribute to the farm and why goats beat heavy lawn mowing machines any day.

Feathered Farm Hands

All the animals on the farm have a job, Hawkes says. The roosters clean the barn, and the farm’s many chickens and ducks clean up after the cows and help even out pastures. “I put corn out there on the spots that are uneven, and they'll go out and even it out for me. And they're doing what they love to do, too, so it all works out.”

The chickens also make compost. Hawkes takes her kitchen scraps and the animal bedding and collects food waste from the Dulles Food Pantry and throws it all at the top of a small hill in the chicken enclosure. “Then they turn it, and we keep moving it down the hill, and we add scratch grain to it and stuff to make it enticing for them, so they'll continue to go through it. They eat all the bugs out of it, all the food out of it that they want, and then with their waste, it becomes excellent fertilizer, and then at the end we put it in this bin, and then we use it on our garden.”

Milk, Yoga And Yard-Clearing

Compared to the hardworking chickens, the goats, while providing milk and helping guests achieve nirvana, were still underutilized, Hawkes says. “I like all my animals to have a purpose,” she explained. Extra dairy goats, of course, could always be used for meat, “but all of these goats have a personality; they're like a herd of puppies.” She’s not into the idea of eating an animal she knows so well.

So, landscaping. “It's good for the environment to do it, and it's really good for the goats, and people love it. So we just decided to do goat grazing.”

Hawkes says clearing land with goats keeps weeds from proliferating, protects against erosion and leaves soil intact. Goats can also climb into areas machines can’t.

“We had one place where they had a huge, beautiful, forested backyard, but they had a ravine that was just filled with weeds and kudzu and poison ivy, and they couldn't really get any machinery down there because it was a really steep slope,” Hawkes explained. For the goats, however, it was no problem. “They were able to clear that entire space in a week, and [the owners now are] able to, like, put a sitting area out there with a fire pit and stuff for their family.”

The goats are also gentle on the landscape: they don’t disturb the soil while they’re chomping on invasive plants and weeds, nor compact it like heavy machinery. “They don't turn up all the soil, which means that the seeds from the weeds aren't exposed,” she explained. If you churn up the soil while attacking weeds, “those weeds just come back with a vengeance.” On the other hand, “machinery will compact the soil, and it will make it really hard for anything that you actually want to grow to flourish.”

Nimble little goats make no difference to the soil, and leave roots intact as they nibble, which protects against erosion, she says. They won’t spew gasoline fumes into the air or rattle windows with noise, though they are chatty little things. “They’re grass powered,” Hawkes says.

As of the end of July, the goats had done three jobs and more were lined up.

'I Don't Like Empty Barns'

Heritage Springs Family Farm was launched in 2022, largely by accident. The family purchased the home and land because they wanted some space. The lot came with a barn, and “it turns out that I don't like empty barns," Hawkes said. "So now we have a farm.”

The current farm economy is a combination of production and agritourism, Hawkes says. Heritage Springs Farm sends some products to a local farmers market, and the farm has a store on-site with eggs, milk, honey, goat milk soap, loofahs, and other farm produce, as well as sourdough, kombucha and kefir and starter kits for making bread and fermented products. They also operate a herd share, giving members access to more dairy products.

On the agritourism side of things, Heritage Springs organizes a variety of classes and farm experiences: they’ve run lessons on making sourdough bread and kefir, and they take guests on excursions to their apiary, to cuddle and feed goats or to work as a farmhand for part of a day, experiencing farm chores. Hawkes also breeds and sells Maine Coon cats.

The farm is a family affair, with Hawkes and her husband Neil running the operation with help from their three daughters. The past four years have been a learning experience, she says, but a happy one, and one she’s glad she gets to share with others.

“People in this area don't really have a lot of opportunity to connect with the land because, you know, you're living in Northern Virginia, and a lot of homeowners associations don't even like it when you plant vegetables and stuff like that,” she says. Of visitors to Heritage Springs Farm, she says, “I think they like coming and unwinding with their family and making memories that don't involve screen time or a movie theater or, you know, just the average stuff. Here they can engage with animals, relax, unwind.”

See the goats in action here and find out more about hiring them for land clearing here.

Check out more about Heritage Springs Family Farm here.